I don't think he is playing that bad,he stoned the Oilers,but I don't think the defence is playing up to their billing and the whole team seems slow to me, real slow. My question is, and this is not an excuse for the Vancouver game, why, in this day and age of 100 to 200 dollar tickets to watch, is a team made to play 2 games in less than 24 hours? All teams have to do it I know, but to have one rested team playing against an unrested one just seems wrong. They play through to June, you would think schedulers could give up a day..............

Kipper is not playing great. His save Percentage is below .900, which seems to be the dividing line between good and great goaltending. (The Top 29 goalies in this stat are above .900). He has faced the 3rd most shots in the league, but if you look at the 10 goalies with the most shots on goal, all but Kipper are over .900. Also, of those goalies with the 10 most shots against, Kipper is the only one with a GAA over 3.00.

Stats tell me he is not playing great. I do watch a lot of Flames hockey living out West. Normally, Calgary and Edmonton play off days from each other, so from the games I have watch, Kipprusoff is not playing bad per say, but not great. Just average, which is not what we all expect of him from his performance in the past 2 or 3 years.

Kipper is definitely looking shaky. He made some great saves last night vs the Canucks but he also let in a couple bad ones (Isbister's shot!). But this is normal, he always seems to come out of the gate slow and then he picks up speed. Usually though, the Flames don't have much for scoring but this year they are getting it in bucket loads. No one can argue that MK's numbers are very poor. And although the defense have not been super strong I don't think you can talk about the Flames mediocre performance without pointing the finger, at least partially, towards Kipper. At $7 million a year he better be way above average instead of way below!

I'm a believer of letting lines ride for a while. Let guys fight through the tough spots and recapture their chemistry, it seems like Keenan is changing their lineups every time they go more than 3 shifts without a scoring chance. Seems a little extreme.

Guest9642 ( )

Posted - 11/19/2007 : 15:58:35

Kipper has let in some softies, however the problem is with the teams defence. Playfair is in charge of the defence and it shows. They did good by getting rid of him as head coach, but made a big mistake when they kept him on to coach the defense! Defence was soft last year when he was in charge and is again this year, coincidence, I think not!

Wasn't Playfair the Defensive guy the year before last as well??I wouldn't blame the coaching or the defense much on this. Overall, there is only one defenseman on Calgary that's a - player. I do think, however, that Hamrlik is a bigger hole than they expected. He logged decent minutes and plays pretty solid. Aucoin doesn't match up in my opinion. Also, Calgary's offense seems to be better this year. Scoring more goals comes at a cost, usually more odd man rushes against you occur by having more pressure in the offensive zone. Few teams in history have had the ability to have both great offense and great defense. In fact, the only teams that come to mind are the Bruins and Habs from the 70's and the Islanders from the late 70's and early 80's.

In the end, I really agree with Leigh. Kipper is a late starter as a rule. But his numbers are even lower than they normally are(I believe). Like I said, .900 appears to be the base save percentage for a starting NHL goalie. Kipper has the 3rd worst save % in the league and is in the bottom 10 in GAA as well.